In addition to a series of established lectures which are listed on another page in the ‘Lectures’ section, below are two subjects which concentrate specifically on music and its relationship to the visual arts.

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Music in the Great Art Collections of Europe

Many of the great – but smaller – European art collections are tucked away in side streets, country houses and provincial towns, known often only to connoisseurs and local communities. With an eye to important paintings, musical instruments and pictures with musical content, Peter Medhurst explores some of these quality galleries, and examines the contents of the Mauritshuis in The Hague, The Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, Burghley House in Lincolnshire, The Dulwich Picture Gallery in London, the Vleeshuis in Antwerp, and the Ca’ Rezzonico in Venice. The lecture – which also makes an excellent study day – is illustrated throughout with live music sung and played at the piano, the virginals or the harpsichord.

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Paintings Inspired by Music & Music Inspired by Paintings

200 years of cross-fertilisation (1800-2010)

It has long been recognised that the worlds of the visual and aural arts link with extraordinary power when one medium inspires the other. This lecture, which spans over 600 years of the arts, analyses and discusses a range of related works, bringing together the music of Martinu with the frescoes of Piero della Francesca, Botticelli’s Birth of Venus with Respighi’s Trittico botticelliano, Böcklin’s Isle of the Dead (image on the left) with Rachmaninoff’s symphonic poem (opening theme below), and Piet Mondrian’s Broadway Boogie Woogie with the piano playing of Albert Ammons.